(Bear with all this text, there's some awesome photos below)
The highlight of any trip to Bangkok is said to be the royal palaces and wats (temples) at the heart of old Bangkok; Ratanakosin island. Home to the Grand Palace, Wat Phra Kaew, Wat Pho and many more historic temples and sights, it has been long vacated by government and royalty in favour of leafy Dusit, and is now instead the home of tour groups, souvenir stalls and tuk-tuks.
It’s brutally hot and tiring, but it was still a highlight of my time in Bangkok.
Part of the appeal of the area is that it is not served by conventional public transport; the metro and BTS skytrain lines start far to the east of the historic centre of Bangkok, and I’m ignoring buses as they are confusing and inaccessible. Transport options are limited to taxis, or a more atmospheric option is to take the river ferry, which costs just 15B(£0.30) from Central Pier at Saphan Taksin to the Grand Palace (Tha Chang pier), and which traces the original method of reaching the palace by boat.
Having woken up really early, I spent the early morning editing photos, checking facebook, and trying and failing to resist paying the 160B for the breakfast buffet in the hostel. Then, I headed out with Philip, Erlend and Helen (Sasquatch was feeling ill and decided to skip a day of sightseeing), via the ubiquitous 7/11 convenience store for coffee and water supplies.
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| The main street outside the hostel - I like the Thai bunting. |
The river ferry was a brilliant way of staying cool and seeing the city from a different perspective. However, as the city’s nucleus has moved away from the riverside, there is little to see in the way of a cityscape. The ferry pier nearest the Grand Palace leads out through a fruit market onto a long, hot, empty road bordered by the palace walls. Fresh mango helped make this walk less arduous.
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| The journey to Ratanakosin, by boat! |
The Grand Palace complex is nearly two hundred years old, and the temple within the grounds, Wat Phra Kaew, contains the national symbol of Thailand, the Emerald Buddha. However, I have to say that the initial impressions of the temple complex were not great.
The entrance area was a mess of Chinese tour groups with matching hats bunched under what available shade there was, whilst guards barked orders at the smaller groups of independent travellers lost amongst the masses. The technicolour umbrellas of bellowing tour guides and giggling locals obscured the view of the low-slung temple and palace in the distance, and the heat of the sun pounded down from above, and rose in waves from the paving. To put it bluntly, it was chaotic and hot.
We eventually realised that we needed to wear trousers to enter the temple, and could borrow them from a building to the left. Soon I and Philip we were duly sporting some lovely beige nylon trousers, whilst Helen was presented with a canary yellow shirt to hide her shoulders. Dressed like blind hobos, we proceeded to pay the exorbitant 500B entrance fee, and first headed into the Wat Phra Kaew.
Warning, there are a LOT of photos coming up.
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| I for some reason think Star Wars when I see this - a spaceship in the back ground wouldn't look out of place. |
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| This photo is in my Top10 ever taken, maybe Top5 |
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| The colourful roof of the Wat Phra Kaew |
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| Again, I keep expecting spaceships. |
The temple is so beautiful it is almost otherworldly. A few of these photos here would not look out of place in a Star Wars set, and I just couldn’t stop taking pictures. However, I must confess that most of the time in the wat my view was more like this, as it was so crowded and so hot.
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| Imagine this whilst sitting in a sauna, and it's about right! |
But even under cover, there were beautiful painting within the walkways and inside the temple buildings.
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| Super-Rooster! |
Even the pillars and eaves of the temples were intricate and beautiful up close. (I promise these are some of the last photos of the temples; in my defense, I did do architecture and history of art papers at university, so this is sort of my thang.)
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| So much bling. |
Of course, in amongst all this photography and shade-searching, I actually forgot to photograph the actual Emerald Buddha. But for those who are interested, it was a diminutive green and gold Buddha image perched high on an...altar?...unsure of the correct word. It was distinctly unimpressive and very crowded.
I did however find time to take some shameless, super-shiny-faced selfies ;)
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| I am unsure what was going on in bottom-right - Erlend was invited to join the photo, and this was the result... |
After the amazingness of the Wat Phra Kaew, we headed into the Grand Palace complex. Much less of this was accessible to tourists, as parts of it are still in use by the royal household. I found it all a little underwhelming, and perhaps we would have benefitted from a guide, but I personally preferred the freedom to wander around and discover things for myself, which I wouldn’t have been able to do as part of a group. Despite being underwhelmed, I still found the Thai Spiderman, and made a new friend.
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| Spider Buddha, Spider Buddha.... |
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| Someone who is more grumpy than me! |
After all the walking around in the heat, when we found a small museum with air con, we all did a shameful tourist thing.
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| Erm...yeah...it was very hot! |
After...ahem...that...we decided to skip the textile museum, and after depositing the nasty nylon trousers (being excellently modelled by Erlend and Philip above) we wandered along the river to neighbouring Wat Pho, via an excellent lady selling skewers of meat for 20B each. I chose to ignore the fact she was using her young children as child labourers managing the fire and delivering food, and ate my food with a clear conscience.
I’m not entirely sure of the history of Wat Pho - this is the downside of leaving the travel guide at home, I am no longer a mine of useless information about tourist attractions. However, it is famous for a gargantuan, golden Reclining Buddha, supposed to represent Buddha at his final stage before receiving enlightenment (I may not have a guide book, but I can remember facts that Philip read out of his!)
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| I'm glad that there was a woman in this shot to show the scale of these massive paws. |
Wat Pho was a far more friendly and accessible temple than Wat Phra Kaew. For a start, it was a fifth of the price at 100B (£2), and included a bottle of water for free. It wasn’t much, but it was a really nice gesture. The temple was far more serene and relaxing, and we spent a fair amount of time just sitting under the eaves of a temple, chatting and cooling down in the 37 degree heat. And yet the complex was just as technicolour and surreal as the last one, and thoroughly enjoyable to photograph.
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| So colourful it almost hurts! |
The highlight of the temple were the rows of golden Buddhas in the temple cloisters and enclosures, which again made too tempting a target for artsy pictures. Apologies, but there are only two.
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| One Buddha, Two Buddha, Three Buddha, etc etc |
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| This again is a fave image, just love it. :) |
After all this temple-ness, we were starting to tire of Biddhas and gilding, so we decided to go for a complete contrast, and head for Lumphini Park, across the city in Silom. It is not the biggest or the most beautiful park, but it was a welcome, cool relief after the airless, hot temples. I was also so happy to find Vietnamese-style coffee once more (expresso and condensed milk over ice). I should have photographed it, but once I tried it, I forgot about photos and just enjoyed it. The park did however present a photo opportunity.
The highlight of the park for me was its monitor lizards, which fill the niche that pigeons or seagulls do back in the UK; ie. they bother picnicing families in the hope of getting some scraps. This little one was particularly eager.
The park was full of exercising Thai people, jogging around a circuit of the park, and waving their hands in the air for some odd reason. There was also several outside gyms, which looked well used. I am amazed they don’t exercise indoors with AC - I sweat lying down, I’d probably drown in sweat if I jogged.
Wow this blog post is long.
Having cooled off in the park, we headed back to the hostel, via a food refuel in Hua Lamphong. Then I spent the evening drinking at a Couchsurfer meet-up in northern Bangkok. For whose who don’t know, Couchsurfing is a concept where you let travellers stay for free on your couch or in your spare room, and the aim is to share culture and stories, and lean more about one another. I had hosted a fair bit whilst at university in Oxford, and whilst travelling I want to utilise my good reference by attending some events and maybe surfing a few couches. The meet-up was a laugh, with a good mix of locals and travellers, and I stayed until around 2am playing Thai drinking games. One of them involved counting and missing out certain numbers. My mental maths came in handy and quickly I was told I couldn’t play anymore as I wasn’t drinking enough.
It’s a novelty to be excluded for being too good ;)
DSP
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